Strinova is an anime-style third-person tactical competitive shooter. Switch freely between three-dimensional and two-dimensional forms in this one-of-a-kind game that offers a unique tactical shooting system for an unparalleled experience.
Multidimensional Shooter Experience
In the multi-dimensional world of Strinova, seamlessly switch between 2D and 3D forms to explore different movement routes and combat strategies, delivering a unique shooting experience.
Advanced Tactical Warfare
Strinova features multilayered maps, stringification mechanism, tactical skill operations, and a variety of useable devices, forming a unique team combat system.
iDreamSky, Strinova’s developer and publisher, is a video game publisher primarily known for Chinese releases of mobile games such as Subway Surfers. The company received investments from Sony and Tencent for the development of Strinova. The game is the company’s first in-house game targeted for Western audiences. Strinova began development in 2019, with the goal of creating an anime-themed third-person shooter. Stringification and character skills were designed to take focus away from aim and gun control—aspects of shooting games which the developers saw as unpleasant for players.
A closed beta of the game was released in June 2024, with a second beta test in October 2024. Its second beta test coincided with the release of a demo for the Steam Next Fest. The game went on early access for Windows in China on August 3, 2023. It was released in China on February 1, 2024. iDreamSky released the game for Windows globally on November 22, 2024. iDreamSky plans to release the game on Android, iOS, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series in 2025.
Strinova is an anime-themed hero shooter, having the players play as characters called “Superstrings”. It introduces a unique mechanic called “stringification”, where the player can switch between 2D and 3D forms of their character. While in the 2D form, the player becomes paper-like, can stick to walls, and can glide from higher places. This allows the player access to narrow pathways and avoid getting shot, even while reloading. Each character has their own primary weapon and ability set, with configurable secondary weapons.Modes are divided into 3 categories: Challenge, Ranked and Custom. There are 7 modes available in the Challenge mode: Team Arena, Demolition, Escort, Sword Fight, Outbreak, Conquest, and Team Deathmatch. Only Demolition is available in Ranked. In custom matches, players can choose any mode and change their characters’ abilities. There are 22 characters and 21 maps in the game.
In Demolition, an attacking team of five players rush to plant a bomb in set places around the map while a defending team tries to stop them. Points are awarded to each player based on their performance from the previous round, which allows them to purchase improvements to the agent or their weapon and unlock “Awakening Skills”—abilities specific to that agent.
In Escort, an attacking team must escort a payload across the map to its final goal, while a defending team attempts to stop them. In Team Deathmatch, five teams of three compete to reach a certain number of kills for their team first. In Team Arena, two teams of seven are placed on opposing sides of the map, with the goal of reaching a certain number of kills of the opposing team.
Superstrings are placed into one of five categories: Controller, Duelist, Initiator, Sentinel, and Support. In addition, they are split into three factions: The Painting Utopia Society (P.U.S.), The Scissors, and Urbino. On the Demolition mode, players on the defensive team can only choose between P.U.S. and Urbino characters, while players on the attacking team can only choose between The Scissors and Urbino characters.
Players have the option to customize the characters they have unlocked. The player can also increase their bond level with each character, unlocking special items, skins, or cutscenes for that character. These cosmetics, particularly limited-time ones, can also be acquired through the game’s gacha system.